The ‘wedding package',a one stop shop for your special day, is great in principle but could rob you of the perfect opportunity to shop! You can do it yourself! First:

First off, you need to get the ceremony itself sorted. Some couples want something memorable for the wedding photos http://pinterest.com/paulsstudio/wedding-photography/, whilst others will prefer something a bit more low key

Second: Make the reservation for your reception, and make it whatever you want to do, not how others think you should. It's your party. You can feed people standing up, sitting down, with a buffet, with a formal sit down meal.!There are loads of options for providing refreshments for your guests. Choose what you want. Help yourself out and ignore seating plans, people will sit where they like, so they are more relaxed.

Then: Your selection for wedding photography needs a lot of thought

Finally! Are you ready for this? Now - head for the shops! You've got the budget, you've got the style, go for it! So:

The Dress: What colour will yours be? In days gone by we got hitched in good old ‘Sunday best'. The penchant for white robes came from the royals, and now it seems we've all joined in. Pictures of George VI and Elizabeth, in white robes, were seen on news-stands across the land, then in 1949 the first royal wedding on television, Princess Elizabeth and handsome Philip was beamed to the whole country.

Wedding gowns are always lovely, but the ones that stand out for me are the lavish deep green one, the stunning royal blue dress and cape, and the funky gold striped number. Mine was blue too, my favourite colour. Years ago I asked my Grandma, who was wed way back in 1929, why she chose a green wedding dress? "Why not?" She replied "It's my favourite colour." Her sage green flapper style dress with silver cloche hat, gloves and bag, would be stylish in any decade.

Shoes: Whatever time of year, even when you should be able to rely on the weather, you can't know what it'll be like on your day. Unless you're doing the whole thing indoors, you will need a choice of footwear. Oh, don't forget to break in your shoes before the big day; weddings can be tough on feet, be comfy!

Veil or Not to Veil: Have fun trying things on, but take real friends with you - they'll tell you if something looks ridiculous. There's a huge selection, from full silk veil to a Spanish comb or smart top hat.

All the other bits and pieces: Can be kept in a dinky handbag.

Your bridesmaids: This part can be difficult if you have a big range of sizes and ages. So make sure you choose from your own ideas, and don't feel you have to go with "the norm"

Ok, what's next on our list…..

Is fitting an intruder alarm in Kent really just a waste of time? A recent crime research report from Kent Police concluded that 'areas in Kent are still suffering from the effects of burglary. This is a distressing crime which can make victims feel vulnerable and insecure in their own homes.'

There are a few all too familiar reasons for not fitting a home intruder alarm that come up when talking about installing security in the home. People often quote the speed of burglars getting in and out and the time it takes the police to turn up if, unfortunately, they do at all these days.

These are fair points. But if a burglar looks at a house with a burglar alarm and a house next door with no alarm - which do you think they'll try and break into?

Most people ignore alarms if they hear them but, a burglar isn't likely to take a gamble if there are easier pickings, so they do act as a deterrent.

The older style intruder alarm systems were not easy to install, expensive and could be quite easily located and deactivated. The best home security alarms today can be wire-free, normally requiring only the system control panel to be plugged in and hooked up to the telephone to allow telephone numbers to be programmed in be called in case of an emergency.

Wire-free house alarms are harder for a burglar to locate and deactivate. Better still, being protected by an approved, professionally installed alarm could reduce your insurance premium since many insurance companies offer a discount for such properties.

Once in place the system monitors doors and windows and detects motion throughout the house. When a sensor is activated, the device sends signals to its various functions via radio waves. The system can text the homeowner with an alert.

An alarm system will not make up for poor security - make sure you've got good locks on all doors and windows and that nothing portable and expensive is left on display like laptops, ipads, mobile phones etc. However, an intruder alarm is becoming a necessary asset to homes in Kent.

As parents, we seem to have forgotten that our babies are hard wired to become independent from the moment they are born

As soon as their legs have the necessary mechanics to move, they want to be given the freedom to use them, not be restraines by any leash. It's here that animal backpack reins can be a godsend.

When I was young, if one of my siblings got the hump about being held back when out for a stroll, they would come to realise pretty fast that Mum wasn't running a democracy.

The parent involved would use one finger to lift the sulky chin, look into his or her eyes and advise, without delay, that such behaviour should stop straightaway - or else!

And the ramifications of that 'or else' left hanging in the air were enough to stop all thoughts of future misbehaviour and encourage any youngster to walk nicely holding hands or onto the buggy. No hanging on the end of the reins and yanking mum or dad's arm out of its socket.

In a time when political correctness has come to the fore, now all a parent can do is try to persuade the child to walk nicely and, invariably, such solutions are in vain. This means that, by way of prevention, children spend far more time strapped into a pushchair to stop such confrontations happening out in the street.

However, someone came up with a brilliant idea to circumvent the problem. Animal backpack reins. These are made of silky soft plus fur and in the shape of a variety of cute critters, any child will adore its new cuddly bag. And, for all parents, the the trick is in the tail, which becomes a rein firmly attached to the bag.

As their little one ambles down the road, his adult minder can retain control by holding onto his tail and no animal will countenance the indignity of having its tail pulled so he tends to behave himself and not attempt to move too far out of range.

But there's an added bonus. The baby rucksack can contain a fair number of those vital treasures without which our offspring seem reluctant to travel. When I was a child, my parents would certainly not have carried around a huge bag, containing copious toys to entertain me but they all seem to do it these days.

Equating to parents with their arms full of huge bags and no arms to hang onto their children, whether they're wearing baby reins or not.

Animal backpack reins - a favourite cuddly toy becomes a multi-tasking solution

And the saviour of the day when you're sitting in a studio for a family portrait with your scowling and distracted child, grumpy, wriggling offspring. Hold them in place by the tail and whip their favourite distraction from the cuddly toy on their back. Suddenly, happy smiles. Sorted!

There are several types of advertising your small business on Facebook - Ads, Promoted Posts and Sponsored Stories.

Because Facebook have acquired vast amounts of personal details about its users - whether they have filled out their bio details or not - they are equipped to deliver extremely targeted demographic information which allows advertisers to pinpoint the tightest demographics and produce a greater likelihood of a like for their Facebook Business Page.

They are simple to use and economical.

If you bid for the initial high amount and you get a good response by clicking and liking, the ad cost will decrease. Often falling by 50c per click in a day.

Always split test your ads to see which versions of your ad are the most successful.

Promoted Posts

For business Pages with more than 100 likes the promote option will appear on individual status updates. Click this and you will see the option to spend a set fee to reach the newsfeeds of a set number of additional fans and/or friends of fans. These should not be confused with Page Post Ads which are ways to promote your status updates if your business has less than 100 likes on Facebook and are based on the interests and location of a chosen demographic.

Sponsored Stories

Sponsored stories allow the Page to target the friends of people who have already liked your Page and will begin with the phrase *Name of your friend* likes *Name of Business Page*. No, they don't require the permission of the person whose name is being used.

Facebook Advertizing

By retaining reports of the likes and interactions of their many users, Facebook has a massive database of personal details which allows advertisers to pinpoint geographic location, male or female, age, spare time pursuits and other demographic information.

If you can imagine the exact person to whom you want to market your business means that this technique of advertising can be extraordinarily useful, resulting in higher clicks and lower prices whether you're using Facebook Ads or Sponsored Stories. The latter allows advertisers to market to the friends of their existing fans.

Facebook is a unique marketing technique - friendly and social, not about products and product numbers. If you use your status updates to talk about niche topics, you can suggest products later. It's a conversation not a send out of your link to the affiliate link.

By making sure that you get their attention with an ad that addresses their pain point and sending them to a landing page that provides the solution in return for a Page like or email address, you are growing your list for future marketing opportunities. You can do this with a sweepstake competition where they can win a relevant prize or by offering an ebook with the answers to their most pressing question.

If you wish to utilise Facebook for business, you need to take off your marketing head and start making friends.

The impact of not working with local business marketing manifested themselves very blatantly today when I tried to book a table at my local curry shop. We have used them fairly frequently and always had a lovely meal. On two occasions they even agreed to open especially for us to serve Sunday lunch... but we were the sole patrons.

The main cause of their decline came from the fact that they were virtually undetectable on line - whether the search was made from a PC or a mobile phone.

Because my own area of expertise is local business seo, I asked him what his strategy was for advertising the restaurant both on the web and off but he assured me that he had everything organised.

A few short months after this conversation, we could not get through on the phone when we wanted to book a table. Driving down to find out the problem, the restaurant was quite clearly no longer serving. The sign outside had been taken down and the fittings removed.

So just what exactly could he have done?

I have never understood why individuals will spend several hundred pounds on an entry in a directory that does not show up on the front page of Google for the keywords that are relevant to their market. Free entries in local listing directories are normally the most suitable option because you can maximise on their domain authority to boost your own listing..

Keyword research should be at the heart of any local business SEO to help Yahoo and google match your website with its search queries. So, prior to beginning doing anything via the internet, you have to think about what your probable purchasers are really going to be typing directly into Bing and Google to try to find you

When you have your list of 'keywords', these should be incorporated into the infrastructure of your web site to maximize all Local SEO (the abbreviation for search engine optimisation) opportunities. If you tell Google and bing that your website is about search term phrases that people are actually on the lookout for and offer relevant information about those keywords, the search engines are a lot more likely to match up any requests with a internet site that it knows will answer them

Get on Google First Page - Places listings

In 2011, Google changed the way they decide who is going onto their first page and began giving local businesses an advantage. They had recognized that most people buy from a business that is within a five mile radius of their own location and, as their ambition is to offer the most helpful and relevant information to answer any search query, the machine had to keep pace with what humans needed.

Google exploited this new knowledge by opening their own free local directory called Google Places Pages. To begin with they scraped the records from the established internet directories and even now they will occasionally utilize data from those places if they feel the entry that you have created is lacking. The leading seven of these pages sit prominently on the first page of the SERPs for certain locale centered keywords making the amount of room for organic entries much less.

This inclusion of the seven new Google Places entries on the first page of their SERPs (search engine results pages), Google had reduced the amount of room that was available for the other organic entries.

The result of this is that local organisations and businesses now have three chances at getting seen on the front page of Google - in the organics with their own internet site or as a free directory listing or as one of the seven Google Places Pages, providing they have made the effort to fill out all the details properly in all the places that they can do it for no cost.

I just wish my local curry house had known.